Ending the scourge of gender-reveal parties (1 Viewer)

Papier mache storks and waxed felt diapers that held mint candies and oohing and aahing over gifts of Pampers were bad enough back in the olden days of baby showers. Trust me, people are only PRETENDING they care what the sex of your baby is. I want to be at your gender reveal party even less than I want to be at the conception of your evil spawn.
 
Are you saying social media creates it or just amplified it?
All that stuff existed before social media


Amplifies it. When you have riots breaking out due to misinformation and just snippets of a video before all the facts are known, when you have fake Twitter "witnesses" spouting nonsense to millions of followers, when you have unchecked Facebook memes stirring up the masses.....

Yes, we've always had vitriol, we've always had political spin. But in the past those things were either localized, or at least funneled through major industries that cut out the fat, now we have every Tom, Dick and Karen who are in control of the country's narrative on anything. Is there a subset of the country that can cut through all of that still? Yes, but it is a shrinking number of people.


No one waits for the facts anymore. Everyone jumps on the spin that suits their own personal narrative, and by the time the facts are out and someone presents them in a logical fashion, it is WAAAY to late.
 
Amplifies it. When you have riots breaking out due to misinformation and just snippets of a video before all the facts are known, when you have fake Twitter "witnesses" spouting nonsense to millions of followers, when you have unchecked Facebook memes stirring up the masses.....

Yes, we've always had vitriol, we've always had political spin. But in the past those things were either localized, or at least funneled through major industries that cut out the fat, now we have every Tom, Dick and Karen who are in control of the country's narrative on anything. Is there a subset of the country that can cut through all of that still? Yes, but it is a shrinking number of people.


No one waits for the facts anymore. Everyone jumps on the spin that suits their own personal narrative, and by the time the facts are out and someone presents them in a logical fashion, it is WAAAY to late.
so do you join me and others who say Media Literacy is one of the most important things to teach in school?
 
It was at this moment Joe realized his plan, while painful, would pay off. He would never have to have another gender reveal party.

Their already-born child could have easily had some kind of facial injury had the dad not moved it right before firing it.
 
so do you join me and others who say Media Literacy is one of the most important things to teach in school?


Absolutely. We also need, not censorship, but punishments for social media platforms and their users for posting false or misleading information. Make people responsible for what they post. I am not talking police punishment, that is kind of stupid. I am talking bans, suspensions, and possibly monetary fines, especially for posts that contribute to violence. Like the rhetoric about Blake breaking up a fight between two white women and getting shot for it. Like Trump wanting people to vote twice. Like Barrack Obama wasn't born in America. Like Antifa is setting fires in Oregon. Like what CNN did to Sandmann.


Both sides are jumping on early, at best partially false statements and edited/clipped videos that is causing irreparable harm, both physically and mentally. There needs to be accountability. I believe in free speech, and I don't like censorship. But I see nothing wrong with allowing said free speech but holding people accountable for what they post on facebook/twitter.


I'm just not smart enough to know how to go about it. All I know is that I am tired of my alt-right friends posting outlandish, spinned truth, and I am tired of my liberal friends posting outlandish, spinned truth. It does nothing but further the divide in our country.


When a portion of our current election propaganda is trying to paint Biden as a dementia patient, when you have a leading Senator calling Peace in the Middle East a distraction, all in the name of trying to win an election, we need to take a step back and realize that we all are fighting for a better country and world.


We can fight til the cows come home about "which side is worse". That fight does nothing. We need to fight against the false rhetoric that pits two people against each other that might not really be that far apart as what they seem to be.


Things like this should be leading headlines:



People working together, and not trying for a winner take all attitude.
 
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Absolutely. We also need, not censorship, but punishments for social media platforms and their users for posting false or misleading information. Make people responsible for what they post. I am not talking police punishment, that is kind of stupid. I am talking bans, suspensions, and possibly monetary fines, especially for posts that contribute to violence. Like the rhetoric about Blake breaking up a fight between two white women and getting shot for it. Like Trump wanting people to vote twice. Like Barrack Obama wasn't born in America. Like Antifa is setting fires in Oregon. Like what CNN did to Sandmann.


Both sides are jumping on early, at best partially false statements and edited/clipped videos that is causing irreparable harm, both physically and mentally. There needs to be accountability. I believe in free speech, and I don't like censorship. But I see nothing wrong with allowing said free speech but holding people accountable for what they post on facebook/twitter.


I'm just not smart enough to know how to go about it. All I know is that I am tired of my alt-right friends posting outlandish, spinned truth, and I am tired of my liberal friends posting outlandish, spinned truth. It does nothing but further the divide in our country.


When a portion of our current election propaganda is trying to paint Biden as a dementia patient, when you have a leading Senator calling Peace in the Middle East a distraction, all in the name of trying to win an election, we need to take a step back and realize that we all are fighting for a better country and world.


We can fight til the cows come home about "which side is worse". That fight does nothing. We need to fight against the false rhetoric that pits two people against each other that might not really be that far apart as what they seem to be.


Things like this should be leading headlines:



People working together, and not trying for a winner take all attitude.
man, i was with you every step of the way until that last 'both sides' paragraph
- and this is more in the hopes of extending the conversation vs a 'gotcha'
but you rightly call for accountability with mostly legit examples, but then you throw your hands up with a 'both sides do it'
of course you want to have consequences for particular instances, but you most certainly want to have significant penalties for patterns of disinformation
if 'both sides' have 50% culpability then they equally share the burden of consequence, if one is operating at a 70% clip and you throw out a 'both sides' complaint then it seems you're stepping into the same trap that you are railing against

and certainly the 'false rhetoric' is to be fought against, but not at the expense of exposing the real rhetoric that is being deployed and is some morphing of problematic rhetoric that has been used for decades/centuries
 
man, i was with you every step of the way until that last 'both sides' paragraph
- and this is more in the hopes of extending the conversation vs a 'gotcha'
but you rightly call for accountability with mostly legit examples, but then you throw your hands up with a 'both sides do it'
of course you want to have consequences for particular instances, but you most certainly want to have significant penalties for patterns of disinformation
if 'both sides' have 50% culpability then they equally share the burden of consequence, if one is operating at a 70% clip and you throw out a 'both sides' complaint then it seems you're stepping into the same trap that you are railing against

and certainly the 'false rhetoric' is to be fought against, but not at the expense of exposing the real rhetoric that is being deployed and is some morphing of problematic rhetoric that has been used for decades/centuries

Well, I'd say both sides...not equally, but really, who's counting?
 
I think the "who is worse" discussion isn't fruitful. Fix the problem and the worse offenders get taken care of by default.

The problem is, who is the arbiter of truth? If someone says something really dumb, people talk about that, then someone comes in and explains what he "really meant" but it doesn't reflect his words at all do we punish the people that talk about what he really said? There's no way to hold people accountable for not telling the truth in a post-truth world. We live in a time where all things are true because, ultimately, nothing is fact. It makes enforcing some kind of Truth Police impossible, especially in a time where 90% of the population is carrying around heavy tribal biases. Who in the heck will we find unbiased enough to determine truth?
 
man, i was with you every step of the way until that last 'both sides' paragraph
- and this is more in the hopes of extending the conversation vs a 'gotcha'
but you rightly call for accountability with mostly legit examples, but then you throw your hands up with a 'both sides do it'
of course you want to have consequences for particular instances, but you most certainly want to have significant penalties for patterns of disinformation
if 'both sides' have 50% culpability then they equally share the burden of consequence, if one is operating at a 70% clip and you throw out a 'both sides' complaint then it seems you're stepping into the same trap that you are railing against

and certainly the 'false rhetoric' is to be fought against, but not at the expense of exposing the real rhetoric that is being deployed and is some morphing of problematic rhetoric that has been used for decades/centuries


You can't deal with it as "sides". When you see misinformation, you dole out the consequence. If one side is that much worse as you claim, then they will get the most instances of "consequences". I left twitter a couple weeks ago, but before I left, I was seeing misinformation on both sides......hourly. Not 1 here, 2 there. Literally every hour the left and right were putting out half truths and stories with omissions, that throw the discussion in their favor and incite their base. This needs to stop. If we want to be that level of honest and that level of being a good country, then both sides need to stop NOW. Neither side will stop until they are forced to stop. And money still talks.
 

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